As human activity has been digitized, new categories of ad inventory have opened up. The challenge is understanding what the inventory is worth, how media channels compare and what creates premium value. Troy Young, CMO at VideoEgg, ponders these big issues and concludes that the path forward is made of "advertising platforms that bring rich ad experiences, such as entertainment and utility... via content, video, games and interactivity, to the right consumer in a friction free way." No small feat. After that is secured, he suggests, then pricing will follow.

Jeff Taylor is furthering his goal of taking newspaper services online with Tribute.com, a Web site for the bereaved. The founder of the Monstor.com job site is starting a social-networking site that houses online memorials for the dead, due to launch in June. The lead investor, with $4.3 million in funding, is The Wall Street Journal. The idea for the new site struck Taylor as the natural next step to putting help-wanted ads online. "I've built a career on migrating the whole newspaper to the Web, and the obituary section is the laggard category," Taylor says.

Less than a week after letting readers send text messages to buy products advertised in their magazines, Hearst announced a partnership with Jango, that will let Seventeen readers create online jukeboxes playing their favorite songs. Hearst digital executive Chris Johnson asserts that the musical widgets are the "first step in a larger strategy that will add more entertainment-focused content to all the Hearst Digital sites. Seventeen editor-in-chief Ann Shoket says the application is important because it helps the brand "live beyond the pages of the magazine."

NBC will double its hours of original summer programming and is also doubling the marketing dollars it spends to hype its new reality-driven summer lineup. The marketing effort, called "All-American Summer," kicked off Friday with a press party featuring gladiators and circus performers. A variety of stunts, such as a giant backyard BBQ in Times Square, follow next week. The fourth-ranked network has scheduled 287 original hours this summer, compared to 90 original hours at CBS.

Industry watchers say addressable advertising--the ability to target TV ads by households--is getting closer to a national rollout, just in time to stem the mounting flow of dollars to the Web. "You'll really start to see scale over the next two years," says Tara Walpert, president of Visible World, which is currently conducting set top box pilot tests with The Nielsen Co. Tony Coulson of Comcast Spotlight says Comcast tests planned this summer will reveal "What is the economic model? What is the break even point?"

A test of interactive television in Boston this month will allow select viewers to click their TV remotes to find more information on everything from a coming thunderstorm, to Big Papi's success against lefties, to a new SUV they've seen on the air. Hearst-Argyle's WCVB has installed Backchannelmedia's TV software and will be the first station to test the program with special set-top boxes. The Boston experience "could be a paradigm shifter" for TV advertising, and "the marriage of the PC and the TV" may finally be coming a reality. Stations such as Media General's WJAR …

Wine merchant and social media maven Gary Vaynerchuk acts and sounds like Oprah when he uses emerging and traditional media to construct a brand based on social equity rather than financial brawn. "Your personal brand is now completely exposed to the world, 24/7. Everyone is media now," is his mantra. Blogger Jeff Jarvis writes that "Brand Gary," with an online show attracting 80,000 visitors a day, has become a cultural phenomenon. His climb to fame shows how a brand can build a business by being authentic and "making and connecting with as many fans as possible," says Jarvis.

The CW, like many other networks, is trying hard to herd its online audience to the living-room TV screen, where CW makes its money. The network has refused to stream the last five episodes of drama "Gossip Girl" and has prompted consumers to take part in contests that require people to watch the program on TV in order to win a prize. "We still are a television network," says Rick Haskins, CW's marketing chief. "So obviously we would like to have people experience the content on TV first and foremost -- and then move them to the …